THE REAL THING?

The IPKat is grateful to Ed Meikle of Dickson Dees for tipping him off about this story, covered in Brand Republic. Pepsi is challenging Coca Cola over its plans to launch a new soft drink in the UK. Pepsi argues the name of Ipsei, a grape juice, herbal tea and vitamin drink that Coca Cola already sells in Germany and the Netherlands is confusingly similar to its Pepsi mark. Coca Cola meanwhile is attempting to register Ipsei as a UK trade mark and has asked conducted research on its consumer impact amongst workers at the Royal Court of Justice in London. Ipsei is derive from “ipse”, the Latin for “self”.

The IPKat thinks that at most there’s only weak similarity between the marks here. Only the terminally stupid could be confused by a mark and an anagram of it. Merpel is reminded of one of her favourite trade mark cases, where Pepsi challenged the use of 15939. She also points out that the Royal Courts of Justice is one of the few places in the UK where staff would be familiar with the word “ipse” thanks to “res ipse loquitur”.